- All right, so we've got
our cutting board here. We've got our mold made, which is perfect. It fits squarely. And if you want to know
how to build mold boxes, we'll have another video on that. But right now before we
pour a massive river table, we need to seal this wood. So let's talk about sealing
wood, and why we do that, and how we do that. Wood itself is naturally porous. It means it has air within it
and can have various levels of air within it. The other thing wood
is naturally is moist. It has moisture within it. So air and moisture together
are two things that we have to be really cognizant of
when we're doing woodworking with epoxy. So when it comes to the
moisture side of things, we know from another
"Alumilite Explains" video, that urethane resins don't like moisture. So if you're trying to use a Clear Slow to seal up this wood or
to pour your river table, it's not gonna go well. That's a urethane. It's gonna react to the
moisture that's in the wood. All right. But what about all the
air that's in the wood and all that air leaking out? Well, if we use an Amazing
Deep Pour, let's say, to seal up this wood or just
pour the river table right away without sealing this wood, all that air is gonna try
to escape from the wood while the epoxy absorbs into the wood. Well, Amazing Deep Pour
has such a long open time that it's gonna continue to do that, not just for a few minutes but for hours. And that means air
bubbles are gonna end up in your final finished river
table, and that's no good. So to avoid that, we need something that is not nearly as moisture sensitive and something that has
a pretty short open time that's not gonna let
all this air leach out. Enter Amazing Clear Cast,
a regular tabletop epoxy, has a shorter open time,
meaning we can coat our wood, get all the air kind of out of it and locked within the piece, then we can use Amazing Deep
Pour to pour that river table. Don't worry all that's
gonna go away though because we're going to sand and finish and level off this wood. So anything we seal is only temporary. Now I'm gonna mix up some
of the Amazing Clear Cast that we can actually use to seal this. But while I do that, let's talk about a couple of things. When you're doing a
woodworking project with epoxy, you want there to be a solid
connection between the wood and the epoxy so they don't
separate or come apart. Well, bark, that's on the outside of wood, you're used to seeing that on trees, they actually comes off pretty easy. So if we didn't remove the bark, we'd be putting the epoxy on the bark, and the bark would snap off. So you have to get rid
of the bark layer here. That's a very, very important thing. And sometimes that bark is
not just on the actual edge, it can be within the board itself. So this right here was a lot of bark that I had to carve out of this piece to make sure it was ready for a seal coat. So remove your bark, sand down that edge, and get rid of all the Cambium
layer, and then seal it. All right. I've got our epoxy mixed up. I've mixed up about eight ounces. That's to make sure I have
plenty to cover the actual board, itself, and also we're
gonna seal this wood, but also kind of seal our mold box, too. Putting a quick, simple
coating of epoxy on the wood and within the base of this tray, insurances we don't have any leaks as well because that epoxy's gonna harden up. So double duty here,
and I'm going to start, I'm gonna go ahead and
put our wood in our box at an angle. And we're just gonna pour
the epoxy right on this ridge right here and use our hands to coat it. Like I said if a epoxy
gets into the mold box, that's not only okay, that's great. It's gonna seal that up for us. And we don't have to worry about leaks. I'm using my hands, and I'm really gliding over
the entire surface of this. We're gonna torch it out
to make sure there's no pesky air bubbles are in there. But the important thing
is sealing up the wood and making sure you have good coverage. Don't forget the sides
of your board as well. The Deep Pour will sneak
its way over there, and we want to make sure that
that's nice and sealed up. Now another thing is pour a
little bit of epoxy actually into your mold box. Not a ton, just a little bit. This actually will act
as a clamp for your wood. You often see in people doing river tables or cutting boards, they've got these F-style clamps
with some HDPE on the top, and they're forcing it down to make sure that wood doesn't float on them. That's great. That works perfectly. But since we're sealing
this with epoxy already, we can kind of glue it to the mold itself and skip that step later. All right, I've got a nice
little base layer of epoxy. This is well coated. So I'm gonna just knock it into place now. Perfect. From here, I can see anything I've missed. Anything that just needs
a little extra love. You can kind of dose it in there. Spread it all around. And then I can use just a
little bit of that epoxy. Go over this ridge one more time to get that final seal. And that will also help me clamp it down in the front as well. Perfect. So that's nice and sealed up. This epoxy's gonna cure. We've got to torch this out real quick. Now you've might've heard
of wood stabilization. That's actually where you
take a penetrating resin or a different type of material, and you actually take all
the air out of the wood and replace it with a hardening substance. Cactus juice, for example, is a version of that. That works perfectly and wood
turners do that all the time. But if you were to do that
with this big of a slab, that's a lot, a lot of
stabilization to do, and that's expensive and kind of messy. This is a really simple
way to do bigger projects without having to go through that step. So we're back with our
torch, and we're just gonna release any air that might be popping out or still rearing its ugly head right now. (torch hisses) All right. So that's it. We have sealed up our wood. We're gonna let this cure overnight, and then next we're
gonna actually go ahead and pour the deep river table. Now the two things to keep in mind, like I mentioned before with wood, is that it's naturally moist. It has moisture within it,
and it's pretty, you know, it has a lot of porosity. There's holes in it. There's air that can escape. So again, you're using a
urethane resin with wood, you're gonna have to stabilize
that wood completely. That takes a lot of effort. So sealing it with epoxy is a great way to continue moving
forward with your project, continue getting these
big, big things done, and having a great time. So in the next video, we're gonna do an amazing
color pour in this half, and I'll show you how to do that. Until next time. (light music)
